Leaving
by Bassair
Summary: Skye wants to leave the team when she realises she has fallen in love with them. And ward tries to stop her.


Agent Grant Ward had a routine. It was a routine he'd perfected over the last few months. It'd originally been a routine just for himself, but later it'd become a routine for him and Skye, and it had taken a while to get it running smoothly, since she tended to be late or early or turn up at the wrong place. Eventually he'd gotten her used to the routine though and now he was used to swinging by her bunk with a coffee for her in the morning before they went and trained.

Except this morning her bunk was empty and she... wasn't there?

He blinked rapidly and turned in time to see her disappearing in the direction of Coulson's office with a bag on her back.

"Skye?" He followed after her, confused and concerned, and snagged her arm once he'd caught up with her. "Skye!"

She looked around and he blinked at her because she had... _everything_ in that bag. "What's going on?"

"Hey, I was... gonna come see you after I..." She swallowed and he blinked at her some more.

"After you what?" he said. He knew that he knew, he could see all the signs of what was happening. "Are you... leaving?"

"Next time the Bus sets down, yeah," she said. "I was gonna tell you after Coulson."

"Why?" he said. "Did something happen?"

She shook her head. "Nah. I just... it's time to move on, you know?"

"...no," he admitted. "No, I don't know." He folded his arms and stared down at her. "You love it here. You told me you'd made your choice to stay, you told me you were committed to this, and now you're... what? Giving up? Did I waste _months_ training you?"

"Yeah, I guess you did." Her jaw tensed and she sucked on her lower lip and he frowned, catching her again when she tried to walk off.

"Ward, let me go," she said, head down and face obscured by her hair.

"I'm your SO," he said. "You're supposed to run a resignation past me first."

"Then I'm running it past you, look, there it goes, past the finish line," she said. "Let me go."

"No," he said and reached out, brushing her hair behind her ear so he could better examine her facial expression. "You're crying."

"I'm not crying," she said, her tone flat and emotionless.

"No, because you're forcing yourself not to," he said, "biting your lip, tensing your jaw, rapid blinking, they're all signs of supressing an emotional response..."

"What are you, Simmons now?!" Skye exclaimed at him. "Stop facial analysing me or whatever it's called."

"Is someone blackmailing you into quitting?" he said. "Is someone threatening to hurt us?"

"No!" she said. "You're the ones that're going to hurt _me!_"

He stared at her in confusion and not just a little bit of hurt. "Who told you that? We'd never hurt you."

She sucked on her lower lip and didn't look at him. "Everyone hurts me, I get too close, I fall in love and I get hurt."

He ignored the _fall in love_ part because this was hardly the time for that kind of conversation. "That's not... true, not the way you make it sound. Hurts happen, but..."

"It hurts less to just not want something." She looked up at him. "And I want you all so bad. I want you to be my family, I've never _had_ a family and now I do and... I'm scared, Ward. I'm scared because teams don't last forever, I know that. One day you'll go back to Specialist work and Fitzsimmons will transfer back to a lab and May and Coulson will go back to whatever it is May and Coulson do and maybe, maybe if I'm lucky, I'll get assigned to another team too, but I don't want that, I want to stay here with you all, I don't want to lose you. I can't... lose you."

"We're not going anywhere," he said. "Do you think that Simmons would let you two fall out of contact even if she _did_ transfer? Fitz has you on Facebook last time I checked, and I may be your SO but Coulson's the one that recruited you. He'd never let a week go by without at least checking in on your progress. And May cares, she may be quiet but she cares. You'd see her too."

Skye licked her lips, fidgeting and tugging at her sleeve. "And you?"

"Partnered Specialist work."

She looked up at him and he grinned at her, a genuine grin. "We work well together," he said.

"I thought Specialists worked alone," she said without looking away.

He reached down and gently tucked her hair behind her ear again. "So did I," he said.

She tugged her bag from her back and offered it out. "Wanna... do the honours of carrying that back to my bunk and walking me there?" she said. "Or should I for a strength exercise."

"What do you _have in this?_" he said in amusement as he too the heavy bag off her.

"My whole life, I used to think," she said. "But not anymore. Come on. We have a schedule to keep to." She started off back to her bunk and he followed her.

"Yeah, we do," he agreed.


End file.
